Impeachment is the only answer to Trump's behavior [View all]

Impeachment is the only answer to Trump’s behavior
Democrats should not be timid in holding the president accountable if they take back Congress

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published June 28, 2026 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) The big current Beltway debate is whether the Democratic Party has gone off the deep end and is destroying the country because a couple of democratic socialists in New York City unseated two incumbents. Apparently, it’s just been too long since party elders and the media establishment had a hand-wringing party over alleged left-wing extremism ruining everything, so this was their invitation to hold one. Democratic strategist James Carville says he’s done with the party over this. Donald Trump is screaming about communists running rampant, and the mainstream media is sighing with relief that they have a storyline to prove they aren’t biased against Trump after all. And so it goes.

Some of us who weren’t born yesterday remember that it was just eight years ago when the same thing happened. Recall that a young upstart by the name of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseated New York Rep. Joseph Crowley, a powerful 10-term incumbent and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. Ocasio-Cortez’s win was seen as a crisis for the ages when she and a group of young “woke” women of color, dubbed “the Squad,” were feared to be taking a wrecking ball to everything we hold dear because they were just too extreme for the regular folks.

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In fact, the idea that it’s the Democrats who have gone off the deep end because a few more Democratic socialists notched primary wins is laughable, a truth that was perhaps best exemplified by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. When harangued by CNBC’s Joe Kernan to “reject” the winners, Jeffries replied, “Donald Trump is the president right now. Are you kidding me?”

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This week data journalist G. Elliot Morris published a Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll that points to one strategy I think is important. When asked “Are there grounds to impeach Trump?” 53% of respondents said yes. When asked to name specifics, the top responses were “corruption,” “self-enrichment,” “abuse of power” and “defying the courts.” There was more — a lot more, from the Epstein files and the Iran war to incompetence, lying and deportations. But by far, the primary grounds most people chose were corruption and abuse of power, the kinds of behaviors that impeachment was designed for. And there is simply no denying that all of it is true. ......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/06/28/impeachment-is-the-only-answer-to-trumps-behavior/